


real delusions

by fantastiken



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Car Accidents, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-06-10 18:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6968530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fantastiken/pseuds/fantastiken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sehun hears the voices, he straightens his clothes and his back, breathes shakily and braces himself for impact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	real delusions

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this picture](http://40.media.tumblr.com/864b746944f2d792ab95f15caf6f99ec/tumblr_n9ogkj07Es1rfzr7uo3_500.png). sehun makes me feel too many things and sekai is beautiful, but oh so painful.

It’s Wednesday. Sehun knows it is because every Wednesday he wakes up more alert than other days, almost as if his body knew what day of the week rolls by without having to look at the calendar. His muscles are tense by pure instinct, ready to sprint away in a race he knows he’ll never have the guts to run. 

He dresses nicely, combs his hair with nimble fingers and washes his face, like every Wednesday, and barely eats breakfast because his stomach is upset and he’s feeling queasy. Like every Wednesday. 

The ride on the subway is long and tiring, like every single Wednesday. 

When he reaches his destination with slow steps, Sehun can barely swallow. The uneasiness has grown too much and he feels his eyes sting. His throat seems to be stuffed with cotton and his shoes made of lead, but he pushes himself further and walks up the wide, white stairs laid in front of the building. 

Once inside the room Sehun sits on the table, doesn’t even bother with the chair. His legs are stiff, but wobbly at the same time —he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to this. He waits as he shoves his hands down his pockets and swings his feet nervously, waits and relishes for a second in the crisp silence of the simple room because he knows it will only be a matter of minutes before the apparent calm shatters violently with every scream and every bang. 

And, true to his thoughts, a pair of voices echoes in the empty hallway right then. They filter through the thin opening under the white metallic door that Sehun is now standing behind of with his heart pounding loudly inside his weak ribcage. 

“Someone came to visit you today, Jongin,” one of the voices says carefully, but trying hard to maintain the cheerful tone, trying to mask the truth that everyone knows but no one mentions out loud. 

Sehun straightens his clothes and his back, breathes shakily and braces himself for impact. The voices are right at the other side of the door. 

“Oh, really?” Jongin’s voice sounds excited. He’s using that tone Sehun remembers him using when they used to talk about that action movie Jongin liked a lot, or when they found out about a new restaurant opening around their place. 

“He’s waiting for you here now.” The other voice sounds more nervous, but Sehun knows he’s the only one who can pick up that little detail, because Jongin doesn’t seem affected by the subtle wavering in the tone. 

“Who is it?” he asks, and the door opens right then with a faint creak. 

For a few seconds, Jongin scans the room with a big smile on his lips and a pair of excited eyes that first look a little disappointed when they don’t see anyone and then widen almost comically when they do see Sehun standing still opposite the window, next to the table. 

“Hi, Jongin.” 

Sehun is terrified. However, he tries to maintain his composure and appear calm and collected in front of Jongin, who in turn looks like he’s about to collapse. The long scar on the side of Jongin’s face is thin, barely there, but it shines a little under the dull light that filters through the dark clouds and Sehun sees it all once again. His eyes fill with tears that he quickly wills away before they lock on Jongin’s pale face. 

“Say hi to Sehun,” the person next to Jongin —the doctor— says. The smile his voice lets out doesn’t reach his eyes anymore, and he looks at Sehun with a mix of resignation and struggle that Sehun doesn’t even want to analyze. He needs to be strong, even though he’s terrified. 

He is absolutely terrified, he is, but he knows that Jongin is even more terrified. His screams pierce his eardrums in a matter of seconds. They’re blood-curling, and his attempts at running away from the room are equally pathetic and persistent —like those of a cornered animal who can’t accept its fate and keeps on trying to survive, even though it has _death_ written all over its little face. The door is locked, though, so there’s no way Jongin can escape. 

It’s sad, really. 

Sehun still loves Jongin more than his life, and it’s sad that it’s come to this because no matter how much he tries to be something good for Jongin, help him… No matter how much he wants Jongin to love him back like he used to, Jongin loves him in a way that is both painful and infinitely different from the way Sehun loves him. Incompatible. 

The accident happened two years ago already. It was big, it was messy, and Sehun almost died. He had been in bed, comatose, for weeks, but he’d woken up and recovered slowly and painfully. Jongin’s mind never recovered, though. 

Ever since the day in which their car was smashed into pieces that night Jongin was driving, ever since he saw Sehun next to him, so close but so far away as his horrible wounds bled his life away at an alarming pace, Jongin had never been the same. He’d tried to help Sehun then, tried to reach for him and wake him up, make him respond to his desperate calls, to his cracking voice that called for him to answer, to open his eyes and tell him that he was okay, but Jongin was trapped in his seat against the steering wheel and none of his attempts was enough because Sehun was far, far away and couldn’t hear him. Jongin had fainted due to blood loss hours after, still crying desperately as he waited for help, and he’d lost consciousness swimming in the agonizing thought that he’d lost the love of his life. 

Jongin was never the same after that day. 

Jongin, his boyfriend, isn’t the same nowadays. He claims that Sehun died in the accident, that he saw him die with his very own eyes in front of him. He assures anyone that would listen to his wails that he killed Sehun that night in their car, in that accident. That Sehun’s death is his fault. 

After two years, Jongin still thinks that Sehun is dead even when Sehun is very much alive and standing in the same room, and he yells as his back hits the wall opposite Sehun when he tries to back away from him. 

To Jongin, Sehun is a ghost. 

He’s not crazy. Sehun is dead, and his ghost visits him, probably to torture him for the things he did, for being the worst human being and killing the most precious person he’d ever met. That’s what Jongin tells the doctors every time Sehun visits, every time he has a panic attack and the doctors need to forcefully take him down because he’s like a raging animal fighting for a way out. 

“Why are you all talking to a ghost?” he cries, shrieks, as fat, hot tears run down his cheeks in painful rivulets. “Why is he here? Why do you talk to him? He’s not real, Sehun isn’t real. He’s a ghost.” Jongin chants the same words week after week, eyes wide and heart screaming. Like a frightened kid. “Sehun is dead. _Dead._ ” 

It’s sad, and very painful. 

Jongin, his boyfriend, the person he cares about the most, thinks he doesn’t exist. 

Jongin, his boyfriend, is scared of him to the point where Sehun has to leave the room yet another week without being able to really talk to him, to see him, because these panic attacks don’t do any good to his already messed up head, to his muddled thoughts and misconceptions of reality. Sehun knows that he shouldn’t have talked . It’s better when he doesn’t, because at least on those days Jongin doesn’t cry hysterically, even though he still shivers like a terrified rabbit as he tries to hide in a corner of the tiny, white room. He couldn’t help himself, though, and that made Jongin scramble for the door hastily as he shrieked and shook in unadulterated fear because he wanted to get out of there, get as far away from Sehun as possible. 

_Please, make him go away._

Love is a complicated thing, Sehun thinks, and sometimes —every Wednesday— he thinks he’ll never be ready to handle all of its implications, even though he’s been fighting for it for the longest time now —every Wednesday. 

This Wednesday, though, Sehun walks out of the mental institution empty-handed again, with an angry scratch on his right cheek that will hopefully leave a scar and the heavy feeling on the pit of his stomach that, no matter how hard he tries, nothing will ever be alright for him. For Jongin. For them.


End file.
